By Rebecca Gaunt
Superintendent Chris Ragsdale announced the removal of another book, Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” from all schools in Cobb County School District at Thursday’s board meeting.
He read a graphic excerpt from the book about the rape of an 11-year-girl. Immediately following the meeting, the district posted a link to the excerpt and sent it out via CTLS to the entire district, a decision that had many in the community raising their eyebrows.
In one discussion in a local moms’ Facebook group, one parent said her child received the email and read the excerpt.
“Our lovely superintendent has, once again, [taken] a very small piece of a story out of context, just to create an uproar. Nevertheless, I had to explain sexual abuse and incest to my 14 year old,” she wrote.
“The Bluest Eye” was Morrison’s first novel published in 1970. It is set in 1940s Ohio and tells the story of Pecola Breedlove who is from an abusive home. The graphic scene takes place in a larger story dealing with themes of racism, internalized self-hatred, poverty, and family dysfunction.
Morrison went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for her 1988 novel “Beloved,” and the Nobel Prize in Literature in1993.
The American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom ranked it 12th on the top 100 list of banned/challenged books from 2000-2007. It is often studied in high school AP courses and in college literature classes.
Copies were already removed from some Cobb school libraries in 2023, according to a library weeding list published by the Marietta Daily Journal.
Raven Carroway has a first-grade daughter in CCSD.
In a Facebook post, she wrote, “I am genuinely disgusted by Cobb County School District’s continued attempt to keep Black literature out of our schools and then dress it up as ‘transparency,’ ‘student safety’ and concern over mature content. Let’s be clear: The Bluest Eye is disturbing. It is supposed to be. Toni Morrison wrote about racism, colorism, abuse, incest, trauma and what those things can do to a little Black girl. Literature is not always supposed to make us comfortable. Sometimes it is supposed to make us THINK. And the irony of the write-up Cobb pushed directly into our parent app is not lost on me. You’re protecting children from this material, but felt it necessary to pull together some of the most graphic portions of the book, remove them from the context of the larger work, and send them to families to justify your decision? It was distasteful, sensationalized and, frankly, insulting.”
Ragsdale did receive some online support in the decision to send the excerpt districtwide from those who agree with his decision, calling it transparency and a necessity to show the “level of vulgarness.”
Ragsdale criticized Democratic candidate for school board Post 4 Micheal Garza during the speech, something he also did in his kickoff rally for teachers at the beginning of the school year. While he did not call out Garza by name, it is the only competitive post on the November ballot, with Republican David Chastain running for a fourth term.
Garza has criticized several of Ragsdale’s decisions related to pulling books from circulation.
“The same local politician has even bragged that he spent a day recently putting books we removed in Little Libraries near our schools, ones targeting Cobb’s children. So someone is lying about this. It’s either me, or someone else. Tonight, I want you to decide who it is,” Ragsdale said.
In a recent Facebook post, Garza listed “Goodnight Moon”, the Moo books, and “The New Kid” as titles he has placed in Cobb’s Little Free Libraries.
After the meeting, Garza responded to Ragsdale’s comments.
“We have never put any books that Cobb has banned into our Little Libraries. Wait, is “Llama Llama Red Pajama” a banned book?” he said.
Rebecca Gaunt earned a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and a master’s degree in education from Oglethorpe University. After teaching elementary school for several years, she returned to writing. She lives in Marietta with her husband, son, two cats, and a dog. In her spare time, she loves to read, binge Netflix and travel.